Features
‘A remarkable time capsule’: The enchanting history of Oxford University’s 750-year-old medieval library
Predating the Aztec Empire, Merton College Library in Oxford has been used by everyone from celebrated 14th-Century mathematicians to JRR Tolkien. In an exclusive interview with the BBC for its 750th birthday, its librarian describes what makes it so special.
At Merton College in Oxford, there is an antique chest. In the Middle Ages, three key-holders had to be summoned to reveal the riches within. But this treasure wasn’t gold or jewels. It was books.
Such strict security may sound overly cautious for mere parchment. But in an era before the printing press, books were a valuable commodity. They could take months to produce, as the entire text had to be painstakingly written out by hand. So, just as universities solicit cash from their alumni today, Merton College insisted its 13th-Century fellows donated books.
“There’s no single definition of a library” – Prof Teresa Webber
The Archbishop of Canterbury issued a decree in 1276 introducing this requirement, which marked the beginning of the library at Merton College. It has been running continuously ever since. To put that length of time in context, Merton’s library predates the Aztec Empire. Its unbroken history stretches from before the Black Death to beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. And its users have encompassed everyone from famous 14th Century mathematicians to Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien.
This month marks the library’s 750th anniversary. It’s a major milestone. But Merton’s extraordinary lifespan has been recognised since the Victoria era, when it was routinely described as the oldest library in England.
In the 20th Century, writers like Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan referenced it in works of historical fiction, bolstering its reputation as a particularly venerable library. As the cultural recognition of “the famous Merton Library” grew, claims about its longevity became exaggerated. Some overzealous Oxonians even declared it the oldest library in the world.
The origins of the historic library
Historians today are more careful about making such bold declarations. “It’s a complicated question,” says Prof Teresa Webber from the University of Cambridge. “There’s no single definition of a library. And there were all sorts of stages in the development of what we think of today as a library.”
The origins of the library at Merton are certainly different from how we think of such institutions now. There was no librarian and there were no shelves for browsing. “There was a system of loaning and returning books from the chest,” Merton’s librarian, Dr Julia Walworth tells the BBC. “It would have been a formal thing. Rather than just saying, ‘Oh, go rummage and find the books you need,’ the whole community would come together to open the chest.”
“Horizontal shelves were installed for placing books upright. Merton is the first recorded use in Britain of this method of storing books” – Dr Julia Walworth
Merton’s collection started evolving into a modern library quite quickly. Just a few years after the Archbishop’s decree, several books were stored outside the chest for the first time. They were chained to a table in the college, making them available at any time. According to Walworth, this innovation “anticipates the modern distinction between loan and reference library collections”.
Merton’s book treasury moved closer to becoming a modern library in the 1370s, when a purpose-built room was constructed to house the growing collection. It was here that Merton introduced a vital improvement in book storage. “Horizontal shelves were installed for placing books upright,” Walworth says. “Merton is the first recorded use in Britain of this method of storing books.”
Curiously, Merton’s books were shelved with their spines inwards and their titles inked on the paper facing out. This was due to the continued use of chains, which were clipped on the fore-edge of each book’s cover. “The fellows were aware that chained books had a better chance of survival than books that went out on loan,” Walworth explains.
Today, just a few volumes in the library are chained – purely for display purposes. And the remaining books are now placed in the modern fashion with their spines out. But otherwise, the medieval room remains a remarkable time capsule of the library’s history. Near the entrance, visitors can even see the 13th-Century chest, which Walworth believes is the original. During term time, the historic library room is still used by students. And this ongoing use is a major factor in the superlatives that are often applied to the age of Merton’s library. “It’s hard to think of an earlier library room that’s been in continuous use,” Webber says.
Claims about Merton’s longevity first gained traction in the Victorian era, as it became more of a tourist destination. Visitors would marvel at its stained-glass windows, as well as rare books like its 15th-Century edition of The Canterbury Tales. “It’s one of the earliest books printed in England,” Walworth explains. “What’s unique about Merton’s copy is the hand-illuminated borders.” Among those who visited the library was American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who mentioned it in his 1856 travelogue English Traits. In 1884, a young Beatrix Potter visited, describing the library’s “beautiful oak roof” and “ancient, dusty smell” in her diary.
By this time, books and magazines were increasingly describing the library in record-breaking terms. An 1878 guide to Oxford called Merton’s library “the most ancient now in England”. The 1885 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica described it as “the oldest existing library in England”. Gradually, these claims were inflated. A 1928 article in The Times recounted an event held by the Oxford Preservation Trust in which it was declared “the oldest library in the world”.
This growing perception of Merton’s longevity was even referenced in F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. In the book, the multi-millionaire title character fills his mansion with imitations of history’s most prestigious rooms. So, it’s only natural that his books live in a recreation he refers to as “the Merton College Library”. As Walworth puts it, “Merton’s library had become a byword for the ‘best’ ancient library” by that time. She even points out that Fitzgerald’s fictional scenario had roots in reality. “The dining clubs at Princeton University have historical imitation rooms. One of them is based on the Merton College Library.”
But today, Walworth rebukes any suggestion that Merton’s library is the world’s oldest. She prefers to describe it with several qualifiers, calling it “one of the oldest still-functioning academic libraries in Europe”. That more measured description recognises that not all historic libraries can be categorised in the same bucket – monastic libraries functioned very differently from private subscription libraries, for instance. But it also acknowledges ancient institutions around the globe. “It’s not that people weren’t aware of other parts of the world in the past,” Walworth says. “But there was a tendency for people to think of their own world as having primacy. Our outlook tends to be more global now, quite rightly.”
The debate over the world’s oldest library
Among these global institutions, there are several candidates for the contested title of world’s oldest library. When the Al-Qarawiyyin library in Morocco underwent a major restoration in 2016, it was described by several media outlets as “the oldest library in the world”. But Guinness World Records cites Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt as the oldest continuously operating library.
In both cases, it’s difficult to establish an exact starting date. For the Al-Qarawiyyin library, some scholars have cast doubt on the library’s claims of Ninth-Century origins, saying the “story has much myth about it”. In the case of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, the building was constructed in the Sixth Century. But ancient writings suggest that the library’s collections could date from two centuries earlier. “It depends how you count it,” Walworth says. “When are you going to start the timeline? What is the beginning of a library?”
However, Prof Richard Gameson from Durham University tells the BBC that the library at Saint Catherine’s Monastery “is probably the one with the longest continuous history”. But he caveats this by adding that “the nature of the ‘library’, how it was used and how it was understood changed over time”. So, any claim to be “the oldest” needs to be accompanied by an appropriate explanation of what a library is. Finding a single definition that allows for one conclusive record-holder seems a near-impossible task.
“You can think of the oldest library as the oldest coherent collection of books that stayed together,” says Webber. “Or you can think of it in terms of the survival of the physical space. Or you could ask, ‘What’s the oldest space and collection of books which has been there continuously?'”
She offers the Dunhuang Library Cave in China as an example. This secret chamber was filled with manuscripts and sealed sometime around the 11th Century. It was only opened again after its rediscovery in 1900. “But the books were still in continuous storage there,” Webber says.
Finding a common definition of a library will only become more challenging now, as digital institutions offer physical spaces that do not even contain any books. “The definition of what a library is has always needed to be a capacious one,” says Webber. “The introduction of new technology is simply a continuation of that. But I don’t think the library as a physical space will disappear.”
Walworth is similarly optimistic, as she embarks on a project to digitise Merton’s manuscripts. “People will be able to access them anywhere. But I think they will still want to come and see the library and understand how people used books in the past.”
Reflecting on the 750-year span of Merton’s library, this digital phase seems like just another step in a long evolution. Just as the books moved from the Archbishop’s chest to chained desks to horizontal shelves, now they will enter the virtual realm. “I suppose that’s why I now find it less useful to talk about libraries as ‘the oldest’,” Walworth says. “For me, the story is not about how long a library has been running. It’s more about the sense of community.”
She points out that the tradition of donating books introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1276 persists to this day. “What started when he laid down those injunctions was the idea of a common collection built by the people. So, it’s just remarkable that for 750 years people have maintained this connection with an institution and its books.”
Perhaps that proves that books really are the most durable treasure – whether they are handwritten on parchment and sealed in an antique chest or distributed as pixels in the cybernetic ether.
[BBC]
The JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva’s recent remarks at a news conference in Jaffna where he ruled out the possibility of holding provincial council elections this year has been widely reported and widely criticized. About the same time there was another media event in Jaffna that went largely unnoticed and unreported outside Jaffna. What was said at the second media event may carry far more political implications than Tilvin Silva’s election timing talk. A veteran Tamil political participant made the startling yet not implausible statement that the prospect of having political devolution under the JVP-NPP government is becoming “a daydream”. The statement was made by Dr. K. Vigneswaran, who served as Provincial Secretary to the only North-East Provincial Council Government that was elected under the auspices of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Dr. Vigneswaran is a Professional Civil Engineer who studied at Royal College, graduated with First Class Honours in Engineering in 1964, and went on to complete a pioneering PhD at the university of Waterloo, Canada, applying the finite element method (FEM) in the field of Geotechnical Engineering. His engineering career has always been at the Irrigation Department where he rose to a Deputy Director. That was when the department was in its golden years, and Vigneswaran was known for his technical mentorship, meticulous administrative skills, and for knowing the fine print of everything. While at the Irrigation Department, Vigneswaran married Ramya de Silva, a fellow irrigation Engineer. After 1983, Vigneswaran became a fulltime political activist and a powerful resource in Tamil politics, but with unwavering commitment to nonviolence, democracy and federalism. The family moved first to India and then Canada, and Vigneswaran has been shuttling between Canada and Sri Lanka.
Devolution: Tortuous Trajectory
Since 1987, the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement, and the 13th Amendment, Vigneswaran has been a permanent fixture in all the politics and institutional dynamic of implementing 13A and establishing provincial councils. He served as Secretary to the only elected Provincial Government for the Northern and Eastern Provinces. After 1994 and the election of Chandrika Kumaratunga as President, Vigneswaran became a key participant in all the civil society efforts and government initiatives to restore the PCs and implement 13A, both during the Kumaratunga presidency and the succeeding administrations of Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo.
Devolution efforts stalled after the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who in so many words declared that he had no time for 13A or PCs in his presidential agenda, whatever it was. Only that his whole agenda turned out to be a wholesale disaster for the country. Already by then, all the nine Provincial Councils had fallen into abeyance with the cancellation of the 1988 PC elections by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo, with the TNA standing by. The abeyance continues under the JVP-NPP government with no apparent end in sight after Tilvin de Silva’s statement in Jaffna.
I say all this to provide the proper context for Vigneswaran’s statement in Jaffna that the prospects for power devolution under the JVP-NPP government are becoming a political daydream. He said something else as well: that of all the government leaders he has encountered over the years, the only leader who has been genuinely sincere about power devolution is former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, and no one else. I am constrained to add that the insincere category would include Ranil Wickremesinghe, who for all his handsome promises, never matched any of them with experiential sincerity. The present JVP-NPP government still has time to show that they are not an insincere lot.
It is not my purpose to agree with or question Dr. Vigneswaran’s assertions, but to use them as cue and context to comment on the widening mismatch between the JVP-NPP government’s promises and its practices on the matter of power devolution and the restoration of the PC system. With a stalling economy, rising prices and external shocks, it is obvious that the government has all the economic matters to worry about, but that does not mean that it can ignore all the other government responsibilities. No government is put in power to solve a single problem or address a single issue. It is in the nature of governments to deal with multiple problems with varying priorities. Otherwise you could have a single cabinet minister to deal with one problem at a time. That is never going to be the case.
The economy is of course the top of mind priority for the government even as it is a top of mind concern for the people. Even on the economic front, the government is holding steady but is showing little progress. And there are other government initiatives where political accountability will call for answers: to wit, the catchall Clean Sri Lanka programme, ambitious educational reforms, contentious energy sector reforms and, yes, power devolution as well as the overpromised constitutional reforms. Not to mention the sprawling unforced errors over substandard coal imports, foreign exchange fraud, and the chronic neglect of developing the renewable energy sector. Correcting these fields of errors may require a separate ministry for each.
Devolution: Daydream or Deliverable
On the PC system and constitutional reform, there has been scant progress in spite of handsome promises. On both, the government is inadvertently deepening the holes that it had dug itself into through indifference, inaction or procrastination, or all of them and more. In the matter of devolution and provincial councils, the government can simply defuse the situation by directing the Election Commission to conduct elections at the earliest opportunity that is logistically possible. Making his statement in Jaffna, Mr. Tilvin Silva alluded to funding shortfall and legal complications as reasons for the necessity to postpone PC elections until next year. Neither reason holds water.
The funding question would seem to have been put to rest by the statement of Health Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa, presumably reflecting cabinet consensus, that there are no funding issues and if needed additional funds could be arranged through supplementary allocations. It is also disingenuous to cite legal complications as a reason. The so called legal complications arose because of the collective stupidity of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe parliament that included the then miniscule NPP and the politically-lost TNA. The JVP-NPP has now ballooned from a handful MPs to a two-thirds majority and it can expedite any legislation that it wants to enable the PC elections to be held without delays.
Alternatively, the elections can be held under the old arrangement of proportional representation with assurance by political parties to honour their commitment to fielding more female candidates. Already at a gathering of all political parties, including the NPP (but not the JVP), and civil society groups, convened by People’s Action For Free & Fair Elections (PAFFREL), the political parties jointly committed to a 25% quota for women and youth under the old electoral system. The ongoing parliamentary committee exercise studying the legal matter, headed by the overstretched Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, is also an unnecessary red herring. The Election Commission is ready to go under whatever law or electoral system that is before it. So, there is no reason to hide behind legal complications to further delay the PC elections.
Somewhat amusingly, Public and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananda Wijepala has trotted out the argument that the NPP government has already conducted two nationwide elections during the one and a half years it has been in office, and that unlike the Ranil Wickremesinghe government the JVP-NPP is not in the business “to delay elections for our personal benefit” – whatever that means. Unfortunately, the good minister is missing the point. The question is not how many elections can the JVP-NPP hold in how many years, but how many years do people in the provinces have to wait before they vote in another provincial election? How many more years? That really is the question.
We know the current situation in the provinces. There are provincial governments but no elected provincial councils. The government administration in every province is being run by the President of the Republic through his handpicked governors and unelected government officials. This is a travesty of democracy and the euthanizing of the PC system. Already under 13A, the office of the provincial governors has been constitutionally and legally compared to the office of the Governors of old Ceylon who represented the monarch in what was then a crown colony. The irony is that a JVP-NPP President may have inadvertently positioned himself as the monarch of all he provincially surveys, courtesy of the Thirteenth Amendment!
The JVP was in the forefront of the litigation that caused the demerger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. If Dr. Vigneswaran’s assertion were to prove correct, a potential dissolution of the provincial system under the JVP-NPP government would be the consummation of the JVP’s original opposition to the introduction of the provincial council system itself. The whole system may not be eradicated, but it could be devoured of its democratic essence while preserving the administrative shell as the medium for the country’s president to overreach into the provinces. That would be worse than a daydream, a real nightmare.
by Rajan Philips ✍️
“Craving begets sorrow, craving begets fear. For him who is free from craving there is no sorrow; how can there be fear for him,” Dhammapada verse 216 states. The mental factor craving, Tanha in Pali, is central to Buddhist Teaching, as its ultimate goal is the cessation or extinction of it—tanhakkhaya. Even though Tanha is translated as craving here, it can sometimes mislead modern readers into thinking tanha only refers to extreme or physical addictions. Just as with any Pali term, it has broad meanings. Venerable Walpola Rahula describes it as “thirst” or unceasing wanting, one of the deep-rooted proclivities or latent tendencies (anusaya) of life (Rahula 1959), without which life as we know would not exist.
Even though the Buddha recognized this natural phenomenon two and a half millennia ago, it was only in the late 20th century that science took note of it and gave it a captivating term—the Hedonic Treadmill. The advantage of this empirical investigation to us Buddhists is that it provides a way to gain penetrative, experiential comprehension (anubodha) of this concept using the vernacular of this technology-savvy age—an alternative to struggling with the language of a bygone era.
These investigations have revealed that there are no hard-to-comprehend metaphysical or mysterious elements involved with this phenomenon; it is a biochemical process fundamental to sustaining life. What is more, an effort to grasp this concept would be well within the goals of Vipassana meditation described in the Sutta Pitaka, incorporating the four elements of investigation: body (kayanupassana), sensations (vedananupassana), mind (chittanupassana), and natural laws (dhammanupassana).
Vipassana and modern science
Vipassana meditation is an in-depth exploration of how humans perceive the world, gain knowledge, and interact with themselves and the environment. Knowing this with wisdom allows one to lead a harmonious way of life (samadhi), a condition conducive to curbing the “thirst” and achieving the Buddhist ideal. The goal of modern science is also to investigate life, but humanity has often used that knowledge to increase material wealth and comfort, providing only lip service to spirituality on the fringe.
An attitude that tends to ignore the consequences of wanting more and more – thirst, potentially endangering the planet. However, that does not prevent us from using scientific information as and aid or a tool to grasp Buddhist concepts. The scientific method bears parallels to the Buddhist approach: it is based on causality (paticcasamuppada), empirical verification (ehipassiko), systematic observation (meditation), and rejecting dogma and beliefs. The primary difference is simply the vocabulary used.
The process of perception: five aggregates
Our five external sense organs receive data (vedana) containing information on the environment: Eyes: receive light, Ears: receive sound, Skin: senses physical contact and temperature, Nose & Tongue: sense chemical properties of substances. The data received by the sense organs is transmitted to the brain, where it is registered as neural networks (sanna). Neural networks, which are interconnected groups of nerve cells (neurons) can be viewed as mind-readable QR codes.
The activity of the brain, or mind (mano), processes this data and converts them into actionable information (sankhara). Modern neuroscience and psychology have made great advances in understanding these processes at the molecular level. This process allows the individual to become aware of their environment, build an autobiographical memory or the notion of a self (atta), and take actions to protect and perpetuate life.
The Pali term vinnana refers to the collection of information committed to memory. Translating vinnana as “consciousness” can be confusing, as the latter often refers to all brain activities. All physical phenomena that sense organs encounter and the mental constructs (sankhara) are referred to as Rupa. This activity of mind forms the basis of all knowledge, representing the entire world as perceived by the individual. This process is what the Teaching refers to as the Five Aggregates (pancakkhanda). The critical takeaway is that the world we perceive is merely a mental construct. While an objective world exists, our sense organs have limitations in seeing it—a fact easily realized through the hundreds of illusions used for entertainment.
Evolution and emotion
The evolutionary purpose of this data processing mechanism is to enable living beings to respond to environmental factors for survival. The psychological and physiological state that arises prior to acting is called emotion. Primarily, emotions can be of three kinds: desire (loba) – seeing a new phone causes an urge to buy it, even though the current one works fine; aversion (dosha) – encountering a vicious dog triggers a “fight or flight” response; delusion (moha) or illusion – an unanswered message to a loved one triggers worry or speculation. Thus, tanha or thirst represents how we connect to the world in its entirety; it can be desire, aversion, and delusion, not merely simple greed. Consequently, these are natural phenomena beyond our immediate control, which are intended to sustain life. In other words, emotions are the forerunner to volitions or intentions, which the Teaching defines as kamma.
The biochemistry of craving
Emotions result from the interaction between the nervous system and biochemicals known as neurotransmitters and neuromodulators (e.g., dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, GABA, glutamate, acetylcholine, and endorphins). Just as the Buddha’s simile of two bundles of bamboo supporting each other describes, these two processes are interdependent and co-arising. Every thought or emotional state corresponds to patterns of neural firing. When neurons fire, they release these chemicals into synapses, influencing how one feels and acts. This release perturbs the body’s normal balance, or homeostasis. Once an action is complete, these chemicals are reabsorbed, and the body returns to its baseline.
Return to baseline is essential for survival. For example, if we stay satisfied with just one meal forever, we could not sustain life. Nature has developed another mechanism to prevent us from being satisfied – we also habituate. In the case of dopamine, the brain adapts by reducing the response to the same stimulus. To get the same level of satisfaction with repeated experiences, the amounts of neurotransmitters needed keeps increasing. This leads to the cycle of craving and dissatisfaction—the Hedonic Treadmill. You “run” toward happiness on the treadmill, but it does not take you anywhere, leaving you in the same emotionally unsatisfactory state, wanting more and more.
Breaking the cycle
This explains why achievements and possessions do not bring permanent happiness, and lead to a cycle of struggle, addiction, crime, and other ills of society. For Buddhists, it also explains why we cling to meaningless rituals. The Dhamma captured this complex phenomenon in the Four Noble Truths: pleasant experiences are impermanent (anicca), leading to grasping (tanha) and unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). The remedy is the Eightfold Path that involves wisdom (panna), conduct (sila), and harmony (samadhi).
Neuroplasticity and the point of liberation
While we cannot stop the sense organs from receiving stimulation (vedana) and sending them to brain, the mind can be developed to prevent vedana from leading to tanha. This is the “point of liberation,” the seventh link in the paticcasamuppada formula. We may not have free will, but we have ‘Free Won’t’ or the ability to say no to the natural tendency to act upon stimuli. We can rewire our neural connections to do so. This ability can be cultivated by practice and repetition, and neuroscience refers to it as neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change with experience.
The natural tendency of the brain is to strengthen frequently used neural networks while weakening and eliminating lesser used networks and building new ones as needed. This is known as neural plasticity or rewiring the brain. As described in the Eight-fold Path, the way to weaken and eliminate dopamine-driven neural networks includes three aspects. First, the process leading to thirst must be understood. One must engage in sila – activities and thoughts that cultivate Metta: loving-kindness and goodwill, Karuna: compassion, Mudita: appreciative joy, and Upekkha: equanimity, emotional stability, calmness, and evenness of mind in the face of gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, pleasure, and pain. That must be done with wisdom, ritualistic behavior does not strengthen the correct neural networks. These activities promote a “cocktail” of oxytocin, serotonin, and GABA, subduing the role of dopamine and helping us step off the Hedonic Treadmill. This leads to a tranquil state of mind and a harmonious existence – samadhi. Again, it is an interdependent, co-arising process that improves upon repetition. Using mind altering substances hijacks this process, thus the need for adhering to the Fifth Precept.
The goal of Vipassana is to understand this process and train the mind to say “no” to tanha. It is not just about sitting on a mat; it requires developing a lifestyle that maintains homeostasis or harmony, samadhi, at every moment. Pali term bhavana means the development of wisdom and insight. In modern vernacular – rewiring brain. This model must be assessed for its efficacy by the individual and realize the benefits by themselves –ehipassiko; knowledge without practice does not work. According to what the Buddha taught, that is the path to cessation or extinction of craving – tanhakkhaya, the supreme goal.
by Geewananda Gunawardana, Ph.D. ✍️
A new art exhibition, titled Spectrum ,will be held at the Lionel Wendt Art Centre on the 20th and 21st of June 2026, bringing together a collection of works by ten emerging artists.
Athsara Wijegunawardena
Neha Thirumavalavan
Dillai Joseph
Wasantha Siriwardena
Champika Dias
Nipun Dias
Dr. Prasanna Siriwardena
Kalhari Perera
Siromi Samarasinghe
Chandana Illankone
All ten artists have trained under the guidance of renowned Sri Lankan artist Royden Gibbs, and this exhibition marks an important point in their individual journeys.
Dr. Prasanna Siriwardena
Spectrum brings together a mix of styles, subjects and approaches, giving visitors a chance to experience a wide range of work in one place. The exhibition will include pieces in watercolors, soft pastels, oils and charcoal, reflecting both the discipline and personal direction of each artist. The work ranges from scenery and portraits to still life and studies of the human form, offering different ways of seeing and interpreting familiar subjects.
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- Nipun Dias
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- Wasantha Siriwardena
Dillai Joseph
Although they share the same mentor, each artist presents a distinct point of view. The result is a show that feels varied yet connected, with each piece carrying its own character and intent. It is this balance that gives Spectrum its identity.
The exhibition aims to support and highlight emerging talent within Sri Lanka’s art scene, while also creating a space where artists and audiences can connect. Visitors will find work that shifts between quiet observation and more expressive pieces, making it an engaging experience for both seasoned collectors and those simply interested in art.
Spectrum is expected to draw art lovers, collectors, students and members of the wider creative community. It also offers an opportunity to discover and support new artists at an early stage in their careers.
Open to the public over two days, Spectrum invites visitors to experience a range of work in a venue that has long been part of Colombo’s cultural landscape.
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